


A Specifically Missing Part

by brionypoisoned



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, But not like self-indulgent angst or anything, Character Study, Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Martin's mother's funeral, POV Outsider, Wakes & Funerals, the expected amount of angst for a funeral fic I'd say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26638483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brionypoisoned/pseuds/brionypoisoned
Summary: Set between season 3 and season 4.Martin Blackwood attempts to arrange his mum's funeral.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	A Specifically Missing Part

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't stop thinking about poor sad Martin while Jon was in the coma, so I decided to write a fic about the weird bureaucratic work that goes into organizing a funeral.

"Would you like some coffee?" Lily Aitken asked the quite large young man standing across from her desk at Aitken's Funeral Parlor. He looked pale and a bit wobbly. "I can make you one from the machine."

"No, don't trouble yourself." He answered. His voice was faint, but there was an unmistakeable kindness to it. Lily couldn't match this person at all with the "Martin Blackwood" his mum's primary carer had warned her about. According to the nurse Martin was a slacker, a wastrel who spent more time getting into trouble with his friends than caring for his terminally ill mother. She'd described a proper hooligan. But this boy, height and size be-damned, looked like she could probably knock him down with a light nudge, and Lily wasn't a particularly strong 45-year-old woman.

"Are you sure?" She repeated. "We've a kettle in the break room, I could make some tea." 

"All right, thanks." Martin answered, more out of politeness than inclination from the sound of it. Lily didn't mind, she'd been managing funerals since she was 18, she knew a man who needed a cup of tea when she saw one.

A few minutes later she returned with a scuffed up mug full of steaming black tea and pressed it into his hands. 

"Have you ever arranged a funeral before?" She asked, keeping her tone as mild as she could. 

"I just... earlier this year I helped..." Martin cleared his throat. "My friend died a few months ago, I helped his parents arrange things. I didn't do much for this bit, though." His voice grew more quiet, shakier. "There wasn't much of a body... to speak of." 

"I'm so sorry." Giving sympathies had become so rote to Lily that she could easily do it while thinking about buying more paper towels, but in this case she really meant what she said. Losing a mother was always hard, and losing one's mother the same year as losing a close friend? She gave his arm a pat as she led him into the meeting room. "I'll try to make this as simple for you as I can. I know it feels like the worst possible time to have to make so many decisions but I'm afraid there's nothing for it, you're her sole next of kin." 

~*~

Martin stepped out of the carpeted entrance vestibule and found himself face to face with an entire wall of coffins. In order to show off the variety available, some designer had built a display of about twelve shiny fake coffins arranged in a grid. Each coffin stuck partially out of the wall, with helpful glass cutouts giving an enticing peek at the interior lining. 

Martin blinked a few times. 

"I've got to... I get... I have to pick a coffin?"

The thought that coffins might come in different styles and varieties had never crossed his mind. The image of a plain wood coffin, chained shut, letting out distant moans whenever it rained, currently motoring around God-knows-where in the back of a delivery van, came to him out of the blue. He shook his head. That wasn't a helpful avenue to go down—he needed to stay focused.

"Right yeah, I'm sorry it's a bit... much." The woman helping him said. "Would you like to take a look?"

Martin went down the line. Some of the coffins were obviously made to be more feminine, with lighter wood tones and linings in pastel hues. Even death was gendered, now, apparently. The pricing varied wildly. One model boasted that it was completely airtight. _What for?_ Martin wondered, then abruptly made himself stop thinking about what was going to happen to his mother inside the casket over the course of the next few months. 

Martin found that allowing his mind to wander held more perils than it used to.

"Look." The woman said, and took his elbow. His eyes must have glazed over or something because he had a to blink a few times to bring her into focus. "To some people, the casket is very important. To others? They couldn't give a fig. What do you think your mother would have wanted?"

_Someone else to plan her funeral._ Martin thought, with perfect clarity. Having seen himself through his mother's eyes, now, thanks to fucking Elias, he was more certain than ever that his mum would hate whatever he picked _because_ he was the one who picked it. 

"M-maybe... maybe something simple." He said. "Just black." The plain black coffins were the cheapest, which prompted a lingering worry that it was a bad choice. What did it say about him as a son if he chose to bury his mother in the cheapest coffin? He should feel guilty about that, surely? But he found he was having trouble feeling anything at the moment. 

It took about two hours to sort through all the timing and the plans and some of the legal stuff, but finally Lily, (he'd picked up her name at this point, Martin was good with names,) slid a sheet over to him.

"It's for the announcement in the newspapers. The obituary." She said. 

"I can't." Martin said, immediately, voice cracking. Memories of mornings in his childhood kitchen bubbled up in his mind. His mother, usually too ill to stand for very long, sitting at the table, newspaper open to the obituaries.

"I don't know how you can be so morbid." Martin would say, making a face and giving a little shiver.

"It's not about the death, it's about the life." His mum would reply, or something like it. "You can meet some interesting people in the obituaries." 

"Meet." Martin would scoff, refilling her tea, or handing her another glass of water.

"It's like a poem. There's a structure to them. You can learn a lot." His mum muttered. She liked poetry, his mum. She never liked his all that much, but that was because she had such good taste.

Martin snapped back to the present.

"It's too much pressure." He said.

"It's really just a list, for the most part." Lily countered, eyes gentle. "I hate to do this to you, but if you don't finish it by the afternoon it won't get in the papers for another whole day, and that'll effect the people who turn up for the funeral.

Martin looked at the blank worksheet, separated into helpful bits for the writer...."Name," "Birth Date," "Cause of Death," "Survived by..." and so on. The 200-400 words that made up a life.

"How long have I got?" 

"You think you could have something in an hour? I can go get you a sandwich if you like. Leave you to it." 

Martin took a deep breath.

"Ok." 

Lily stepped out of the parlor after giving Martin another encouraging pat on the shoulder. He was a tactile person, Martin, he liked to be touched. When he went to visit Jon in the hospital he made a point to hold his hand—after the nurses told him it was all right, of course. Jon's bony fingers would always start out stiff and sort of lukewarm but usually by the time Martin left they'd warm up some. 

He'd answered the call about his mum while sitting at Jon's bedside. When imagining his mother's death, (a horrible thing to do, but unavoidable with her diagnosis,) he had always pictured himself right there, holding her hand, telling her how much he loved her. In his more optimistic moments, he'd imagine whispering in her ear that he had forgiven her. But no, he'd heard the news from some unfortunate nurse from miles away while he was sat with the unresponsive corpse of his boss who didn't care if he was alive or dead. 

_Who'll write Jon's obituary, when he goes?_ Martin thought, trembling numbness creeping up his arms. It shouldn't be him, he knew, that would be silly, even though he was fairly certain no one alive loved Jon as much as he did. How sad. For both of them.

He realized that that he'd been thinking of Jon's death as a certainty for the past few minutes. Usually he was both stubborn and adamant in keeping up hope of a recovery, but it was tough to be optimistic whilst sitting opposite a wall of coffins. His mum was dead. The thought came to him with finality and utter clarity. His mind, allowed to wander for just a moment, had immediately betrayed him. He no longer had a mum that he could call, or forget to call. He'd never get the chance to convince her he was worth loving. 

He wrote down her name, hand steady. She wouldn't want him to write her a poem. But he could write her an obituary. He could do that.

~*~

In a lifetime's worth of funerals Lily had borne reluctant witness to the full range of family dynamics. She'd been background dressing to the worst day of many people's lives. She'd seen deadbeat dads and outcast daughters and tearful reunions and full on fistfights. Martin Blackwood, she decided, watching him stand, ashen-faced and trembling at the front of the parlor, was not a bad son. 

Many of the funeral attendees appeared to be nurses and caregivers, some of whom greeted Martin with tearful hugs, others with barely-repressed disdain. Martin just stood there and took all of it with the slightly blank expression of a person who had been through too much to have to deal with so many people. He was doing a fine job, and she decided to tell him so whenever she got the chance.

Her phone buzzed, alerting her of a late flower delivery. She hurried to pick up the bouquet, and was pleased to see the handwritten card attached to it was addressed directly to Martin. She carried it into the parlor and made a point to let Martin know that these were for him, placing the card directly into his hands. 

Martin's face clouded over as he read it.

"How did... ugh." He handed the card back to her, face fully petulant for the first time since he'd walked into the funeral home. "Thank you." He said, voice clipped. "Please put them in the back." 

Lily mentally kicked herself as she carried the spurned flower arrangement to an out of the way spot. She wondered what "Mr. Elias Bouchard" had done that earned such a response. 

"Excuse me." A tall, broad man with gray hair and a voice so soft that she had to really focus to understand what he was saying, tried for her attention. "Is this the Blackwood viewing?" 

Something about this man put Lily on edge. There was no warmth in his eyes, and that chill seemed to spread to her arm as shook his hand.

"Right this way." She guided him to the parlor, where Martin still stood alone at the front of the room. Small groups of people huddled in tense clusters and made quiet conversation, waiting for a polite opportunity to leave. 

Lily waited for the cold, strange man to join the rest of the grieving, but he remained fixed at her side. 

"Lonely work, funeral directing." He said. "To be unaffected in a room full of the suffering." 

"It can be... difficult." Lily answered before thinking. "I mean... it's rewarding, of course! Sometimes you can help people." She glanced up again at Martin, still stood at the front of the room with an absent, miserable expression. After this was over she was going to give that young man a cake, a hug, and a handful of brochures about mental health. 

"I thought you might say that." The man next to her clapped a heavy hand on her shoulder and Lily found herself blinking against a sudden mist, wholly, terribly, inexplicably, 

Alone.

~*~

"How are you holding up?" Peter asked Martin, appearing at his side next to the coffin with enough suddenness to make Martin jump.

"Christ... Peter." Martin sighed and looked over at him with poorly concealed irritation. "How do you think?" 

"Basira and Melanie aren't going to make it." Peter said. He didn't mention that the reason they weren't going to make it was because he'd told them the funeral was the next day and then left heavy hints that an emerging Web threat was becoming dire. "I told them I'd pass along their sympathies."

"Its fine." Martin answered, turning to face the door with a set expression. "They're busy." 

"I didn't think their presence was exactly what you wanted today, either." Peter hinted.

"No..." Martin admitted, "Not really." 

"Have you given any more thought to..."

"Not the _time_ , Peter." Martin hissed. Some of the funeral attendees began to look over at Martin with judgement, as he now appeared to be bickering with someone right in front of his mother's corpse. Perfect, just... perfect. 

"I understand." Peter said, voice gentle. "I just want you to know that I'm here for you." 

"Of course _you're_ here for me. The human embodiment of loneliness has got my back, makes perfect sense." 

"I suppose you wouldn't believe me if I said I was sorry for your loss?" Peter asked, unable to keep the smile out of his voice.

"Fuck off, Peter." Martin snapped. One of his mother's nurses, the one who'd been there when she died, stood up with a huff.

"You should be ashamed!" She whispered, giving Martin a look that radiated righteous indignation. Lord knows what his mum must have told her about him. Martin blushed red.

"I'm-I'm sorry!" He apologized, but she'd already rushed off, clutching her purse to her side like she was afraid he was going to snatch it. Martin focused on staying calm, allowing himself to go numb again—a much preferable sensation to the hot misery and grief that kept threatening to overwhelm him.

"I'll see you later, then." Peter said, smug.

"Yeah. Whatever." Martin answered.

Peter made a perfunctory nod at the body and then strolled out of the funeral parlor. Martin glanced up at the clock. He had another half hour of this, yet. He looked back at his mother's coffin, at the heavily made up, waxy looking face that was both hers and not hers. Jon, in his hospital bed, looked just the same even if he was _technically_ alive. 

Shouldn't he be weeping? He felt, in a distant way, as though he ought to be weeping. Martin was a good cryer, the kind of person that cried at commercials, or particularly saccharine Christmas songs. But here he was, at his mother's viewing, and the type of emotions that ought to inspire actual tears felt miles away. He would feel ashamed if he weren't similarly cut off from wherever that emotion lived. 

He was left with only one conclusion, really, in the nothingness. 

He was better off alone.


End file.
